If everyone could be a successful and rich author, there would be no point in working so hard. Where is the fun in that?
Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.
Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature— at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it comes— is to write anything original. And perhaps the easi...
Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, or making friends. It's about doing what you love the best you know how. It's about making a heart pound in fear, shrink from rage, weep with understa...
May my mind be clear and my heart pure.
The next best thing after finishing writing a chapter is starting a new one.
Writing is my life. Life is my hobby.
The privilege is not writing a novel, it's to have someone read it. When you look at it that way, you realize the responsibility you have to put your very best on the page.
From ... the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. ... I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that soo...
You have a great advantage as a writer, Monsieur,' said Poirot. 'You can relieve your feelings by expedient of the printed word. You have the power of the pen over your enemies.
If you are destined to become a writer, you can't help it. If you can help it, you aren't destined to become a writer. The frustrations and disappointments, not even to mention the unspeakable lonelin...
There is a certain type of greasy hair that you get only when you are writing with no breaks.
Most of my writing life, to be perfectly honest, is not freaky, old-timey, voodoo-style Big Magic. Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my des...
I've tried to explain to people that I don't 'love' writing any more than I 'love' breathing. It's something I do and it's something I need. If I thought about it as a love/hate thing, I probably woul...
I see Sarah framed in the light of her doorway and it is like looking at a painting that emanate a mixture of wishes and truths about someone I loved - from a time I can already vividly remember. I wo...
Always write as if you will never have the blessed chance to write again, so this has to be the best thing you've ever done. Do that, and it will be.
Everything is research.
Some days being a writer consists of telling yourself you aren't insane, your characters are.
You never have to change anything you get up in the middle of the night to write.
I knew how severe I had been and how bad things had been. The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one who poverty bothers.